First, Will crams his foot completely down his throat about black power. Then he quotes Steele talking about King, the “selfless” black leader, vis-a-vis other black leaders. The implication is that Carmichael, the black leader who coined the phrase “black power,” was somehow not as selfless.
Let me be clear: Carmichael was just as selfless as King. His contribution to the civil-rights movement was as great, if not greater than, King’s.
You read that correctly. If you have any doubts, go back and read it again.
Before June 16, 1966 -- the day he uttered the words “black power” at a rally where the media was in attendance -- Carmichael had worked in Mississippi and Alabama, setting up Freedom Schools and registering black folks to vote. He was arrested over 20 times and put his life on the line each and every day. He watched as some of his fellow SNCC members were brutalized by Southern cops and sheriffs. Some were killed.
So, when Carmichael took the mike that night in Greenwood and shouted “Black Power!” it wasn’t, as Will claimed, “an exercise in the power of helplessness.” It was, as Carmichael claimed in his autobiography, “Ready For Revolution,” putting white America on notice that SNCC would no longer tolerate the failure of white power.
Before June 1966, civil rights workers depended on the federal, state or local government to protect them from the attacks of racist whites. By June of 1966, SNCC members were saying “To hell with that.”
SNCC members and other civil rights leaders had decided to continue a march that James Meredith had started. Meredith, the first black student at the University of Mississippi, was shot soon after he’d started the march.
Unlike in earlier days, when SNCC members would have appealed to the federal government for protection, organization leaders decided to seek the protection of the Deacons for Defense and Justice. In his autobiography, Carmichael remembered what one Deacons member said:
“He issued a warning to the white folks between here and Jackson. Anyone who messes with this march be putting their life on the line. The brother sounded serious too … I do seem to recall that we got to Jackson without further incident.”
Now, that's what black power was. And it was only one example of it. In his book “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” King wrote that “Black Power, in its broad and positive meaning, is a call to black people to amass the political and economic strength to achieve their goals.”
Forty years after the birth of the phrase in the civil rights movement, Will is one of the few talking about black power. He’s wrong. But at least he’s talking about it.
Why aren’t we talking about it?
